While I Was Gone

Approaching the airport to pick me up after Grandmas funeral Ben said, “We must be getting close to the erport because it’s starting to get airplaney.” As if airplaney was a sort of weather. I gave Maddie a hug in her carseat when I got to the car. She was asleep and sort of stirred. After we started to go, she told me, “I can’t give you a snuggle mom, because we’re BAD piewat (pirate).” While I was gone Maddie told the neighbor that I wasn’t coming home because “Mommy doesn’t like us.” At least each time she said it, she had a sneaky smile. When Brian would tease and probe, she would giggle and play along like it was a really funny joke. Several times in the next few days she told me I would have to “walk the plank” in her scariest voice. Brian finished a bunch of the baseboards in the basement. He’s getting so close to completing the living room. Since our basement flooding started last May (that is May of 2008) we have cleaned up four floods (sucked water out, dried carpets and pad, moved all our belongings to the living room and back down). Knowing the floods would get worse, not better, we bit the bullet and paid through the nose to install a sump pump along the three exterior walls and moved everything upstairs for two weeks. When the new concrete finally dried, we put lots of things back and cleaned up the concrete dust that covered every surface of all three stories of our house. Then ripped out the wood paneling wall they had damaged beyond repair. From here on out, it was pretty much a one man show. Brian installed insulation in the walls, added a few more electrical outlets, sheetrocked, mudded and taped, sanded, mudded again, sanded, primed and painted. Then painted baseboards and upper trim, cut and install, putty the nail holes, sand, touch up paint again. Brian is amazing. We’ve learned that all home projects take infinitely larger amounts of time since we have three kids. I have high hopes that eventually that will not be the case. We’re training them to be helpers in our work projects, but today, they remain more distraction than help. Of course they always want to participate and Brian does a particularly good job of finding ways to include them, even if it means the paint job will take two hours instead of one. Most of the time though, Brian works after the kids are all in bed which makes for a short work session or a very late night. Like I said, he’s amazing.